Raves for Bob Dancer and Million Dollar Video Poker

“Bob Dancer makes me sick. Here I am, telling everyone they have to scout the casinos, trick the floormen, and endlessly badger bosses and hosts for comps, and all he does is show up and play a lousy machine and he’s outcomped me three years running. Dancer talks the talk and walks the walk and now anyone who plays video poker can walk with him—right to the bank.” —Max Rubin, author of Comp City: A Guide to Free Casino Vacations

“Bob has written a book that every video poker player will love. It’s not only a close-up look at the daily life of a working video poker pro, but also as close as most of us will ever get to the big leagues of video poker play. Bob Dancer is a pat hand, a one-of- a-kind whose book pays off 100%.” —Skip Hughes, publisher of Video Poker Player and host of www.vphomepage.com

“A surprisingly candid look at the ups and downs, successes and failures, of a professional video poker player. Bob reveals both the mistakes he made and the mistakes the casinos made.” —John Robison, author of The Slot Expert’s Guide to Playing Slots

“A fascinating glimpse into the high-roller video poker world, with useful information even a low-roller can use.” —Jean Scott, author of The Frugal Gambler and More Frugal Gambling

“While primarily informative, this is a fun read. It’s easy to see more … why our readers voted Dancer ‘Favorite Gaming Personality’ for both 2001 and 2002. ” —Glenn Fine, publisher, Casino Player magazine

“If genius is where inspiration meets perspiration, Bob Dancer is a video poker genius. His million-dollar saga is not so much one of luck as of recognizing opportunity and working hard to take advantage.” —John Grochowski, gambling columnist, Chicago Sun-Times

“An intriguing behind-the-scenes look at the life of a professional gambler. From the lows of hustling $2 coupons to the highs of hitting a $400,000 royal flush, Dancer reveals what it took to make him the winningest video poker player in the world.” —Steve Bourie, author of American Casino Guide

“Bob Dancer’s adventures of an ‘edge-hunter’ make for fascinating reading. His observations are right on target. Peppered with profiles of characters, filled with advice and anecdotes about what every player seeks—how to get the money.” —Howard Schwartz, Gambler’s Book Shop

“It’s exciting to read about someone winning six-figure jackpots. It’s exciting to read about the huge ups and downs along the way and the emotional reactions of the player whose money is being won or lost. Bob Dancer, a video poker pro, shares all this, and more, in his book Million Dollar Video Poker.” —Stanford Wong, author of Professional Video Poker Million Dollar Video Poker

Bob Dancer

Huntington Press Las Vegas, Nevada Table of Contents

Part One—The Ins and Outs of Video Poker The Easy Part of Video Poker...... 1 The Hard Part of Video Poker...... 2 How Good Am I?...... 5 How Much in This Book is True?...... 9 What You Need to Know About Video Poker to Understand this Book...... 10

Part Two—From Backgammon to Big Vegas Lessons from the Cavendish West...... 15 What I Learned from Playing Blackjack...... 20 Blackjack Partner Ginnie Woo...... 28 Scouting for Stanford...... 35 Vegas World Revisited ...... 37 Playing at the Sahara in 1994...... 40 I Meet a Knowledgeable Man...... 50 Vacation Village in My Early Days...... 54 My First Play for Dollars...... 58 Letting Them Do the Math...... 65 How Are Your Flushes Running Today?...... 68 I Learn How Comps Add Value...... 71 My Ship Has Come In...... 74 Players React to the Rio...... 84 Finding a Backer...... 90 Loose Deuces at the Frontier ...... 95 v Million Dollar Video Poker

Courting Shirley on a Budget ...... 101 A Second Woman Enters the Picture ...... 105 Reducing the Outflow ...... 108 Big Time at Bally’s ...... 112 Living on the Dark Side ...... 122 Trying to Go to the Bahamas ...... 125 Teaching Shirley to Play ...... 129 Royal Coupon Adventure at the Casino Royale ...... 134 Shirley Doesn’t Always See it My Way ...... 140 Invitational Giveaways ...... 145 Invitational Slot Tournaments ...... 148 Triple Play—Being in the Right Place at the Right Time ...... 151 At the Orleans with the Dailys ...... 155 The Care and Feeding of Slot Hosts—Part I...... 160 The Care and Feeding of Slot Hosts—Part II...... 162 Common Questions and Uncommon Answers...... 164

Part Three—Bob Dancer, Inc. I Meet Jeffrey Compton...... 169 Writing My Reports...... 173 Consulting for the Casinos...... 178 Liam W. Daily—Master Strategist...... 180 Dean Zamzow—An Important Ally...... 181 Teaching Video Poker...... 186

Part Four—My Million-Dollar Six Months...... 193 The Dancers at the MGM Grand...... 193 Shirley’s White-Knuckle Ride...... 194 There’s Luxury, and There’s Luxury...... 198 Still the Best Deal in Town...... 201 Playing On...... 206 NSU Deuces at the MGM...... 209 Double Holiday Gift Shoppe Points...... 213 vi Million Dollar Video Poker

Taking the Occasional Potshot...... 226 Big-Time Potshots...... 229 Bonanza at the Holiday Gift Shoppe...... 231 The First Forty Days and Forty Nights of 2001...... 235 Our Biggest Night Ever...... 238 Knowing the End is Near...... 242 Facing the Inevitable...... 244 The Venetian Dances to its Own Drummer...... 250 Let’s Be Fair...... 253

Part Five—Winning is a Process, Not an Event...... 257

Index of Additions...... 261 Part One The Ins and Outs of Video Poker

Gamblers are always dreaming about hitting it big. My version of that dream came true during a six-month period between September 2000 and March 2001. It was that to-die-for time where all lights are green, chocolate doesn’t have calories, and there are never lines at the supermarket. It was a wonderful six months, but the real story is how I got ready for that period. Seven years earlier I had a very small bankroll and knew nothing about video poker. This book is about the seven-year journey to achieve the six-month dream come true.

The Easy Part of Video Poker What’s hard and what’s easy is a matter of perspective. For example, if you ask Los Angeles Laker star Shaquille O’Neal whether it’s hard or easy to dunk a basketball, his answer would be different from mine. For me, there was a brief period 40 years ago when I could jump high enough to touch the basketball rim, but I could never get any higher. Shaq can dunk the ball flat-footed. Even with such an obvious comparison, some people will take issue with the proposition I am about to advance. From my perspective, the easy part about playing successful video poker is learning to play the hands essentially perfectly. Knowing enough to distinguish in 9/6 Jacks or Better between K♠J♥T♥7♠5♣ and K♠J♥T♥6♠5♥ is the easy part of the game. And I say this knowing full well that probably 95% of all players 2 Million Dollar Video Poker play these two hands identically, even though JT is the proper play in the first case and KJ is the proper play in the second. So how can that be the easy part if so few people can do it? Because the information on how to play video poker without error is widely available, and computer programs will correct you whenever you’re wrong, so most people willing to put in the hours can learn this game perfectly. It may take you 10 hours, 100 hours, or 1,000 hours, but it can be done. The reason why most people don’t play that hand correctly is because they simply haven’t put in those hours—or they have put them in, but they studied material from authors who do not believe that the difference between these hands is important. For whatever reason, these players don’t see the value of learning the game perfectly. The players who really want to succeed, however, do the work that has to be done. For them, these hands, and most others as well, are not particularly difficult. So if that’s the easy part of the game, what’s the hard part? Let me suggest some of the things that are difficult.

The Hard Part of Video Poker Sometimes while playing quarter video poker, you’ll lose $500 a day for three days straight. Or when playing for dollars, you’ll lose $2,000 a day for three days straight. How does that affect your well being? And if you’re married, how do you convince your wife that it’s just a normal swing of the game and that she doesn’t have to worry about it? Some people are always in debt. These people, for whatever reason, can’t get a bankroll to gamble with. And even if they some- how did, they couldn’t hang onto it. Are you one of these people? A casino is full of distractions. Every casino has an advantage on perhaps 99% of all bets available. Do you have the discipline to limit yourself completely to the remaining 1%? The casino will ply you with free booze served by attrac- tive provocatively dressed young ladies. The casino doesn’t care The Ins and Outs of Video Poker 3 whether it’s the liquor or the ladies that ruins your concentration. Either way you fail is fine with them. Can you run that gauntlet and still concentrate on the game? The casinos hire talented marketing people who dream up incentives for you to come and visit. Some incentives are extremely valuable and some are not. Can you distinguish between them? On those rare nights when you win win win, can you keep your perspective and not go out and blow it? On those not-so- rare nights when you lose lose lose, can you deal with the actual loss of your bankroll, plus that ugly sickening feeling too? When it takes three years to build a bankroll and you lose half of it in a week, can you still function? Playing in smoky casinos, sitting under air-conditioning vents on uncomfortable stools, and using the same muscles over and over and over again lead to a variety of ailments. Eating free food in a casino night after night has caused many of us to gain far more weight than is desirable. But to play the game you have to survive all of this. Can you? Is it a problem when people look down on you, because they feel that being a gambler is an unproductive way to lead a life? And if you become real good, can you keep that fact a secret from the casinos so you can continue to play? If you believe that telling the truth is always the best policy, then you probably don’t have sufficient guile to succeed at this sport. Things are not always black and white here. Sometimes the pressures to push the envelope are enormous. The low road is sometimes more lucrative than the high road, but the risks are enormous if you don’t succeed. Do you look good in stripes? Can you deal with the repetition? Video poker is a very bor- ing game when you play it 40 hours a week. Playing perfectly at home for 10 minutes at a time is a lot different from playing hour after hour after hour in a casino. Jeffrey Compton, my friend and business partner, has learned Jacks or Better perfectly and can play it well for an hour or two at a time. But if he has to sit at a machine for longer than that, he starts to make a large number 4 Million Dollar Video Poker of errors. So even though he has learned the game perfectly, he’s unlikely ever to become a successful professional player. Slot clubs provide lots of benefits to players. The most successful players study these slot clubs two ways from Tuesday until they know exactly how to extract the most from them. Can you do this? The game is getting more difficult. When I started my video poker career in 1994, players told me about the “good old days” five years earlier when full-pay dollar Deuces Wild could be found all over town. Today, the games are not nearly as lucrative as they were when I started. It’s reasonable to assume that in two years there will be fewer profitable opportunities yet. Can you keep current enough to stay ahead of the game? You get my point. Mastering the correct way to play the hands just gets you to first base. This is absolutely necessary for success, but you still have a lot of work to do once you reach that point. Playing the hands is definitely a worthy subject for a book on video poker; indeed, the Winner’s Guide series that I’ve co-written with Liam W. Daily deals with this subject, but this book doesn’t. Thousands of people have reached first base in video poker, but haven’t done so well after getting there. This book briefly describes how I did it, but mostly dwells on how I hit subsequent doubles and triples, then finally my million-dollar home run. Many of the specifics I write about here are one-of-a-kind and probably won’t come around again in exactly the same way. But the same types of choices will arise and the tools I used to deal with them in the past will be the same ones I’ll use in the future. Whether these are useful tools for you to use, you’ll have to decide for yourself. A large part of my success was a winning attitude—knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em, as it were. This I can share with you, but my philosophy won’t work for you until you modify it to fit your own strengths and weaknesses. A lot of luck was involved in the million-dollar success that my wife Shirley and I achieved, especially one extremely lucky The Ins and Outs of Video Poker 5 half-hour period where we earned a half-million in two big jackpots. That may or may not ever happen again for us—or for you. But having the bankroll, skill, and courage to even be in position to recognize the opportunity, and receive that good fortune, required a lot more than luck. It took years of study and play. It took surviving some very long and ugly losing streaks. To stay in the game, you must learn to cope with terrible losses. I’ll tell you about all of that. And there were benefits along the way. We stayed in gorgeous hotel suites and ate in the fanciest restaurants in Las Vegas. We could get up to eight free tickets to any event in town. And there are a lot of events in Las Vegas that will satisfy virtually anyone’s taste. I’ll tell you about that too. It was an extremely stimulating and professionally gratifying, albeit bumpy, ride. I’ll recreate it for you in the pages that follow. So fasten your seatbelt and let’s get started.

How Good Am I? I’m a solid professional player and I limit myself to the few games that I know well. There are probably 50 other pros that play every bit as well as I do. Maybe more. There are far better video poker mathematicians and theoreticians than I. Many are quite a bit smarter. I’m not a computer programmer, even though the top-selling video poker computer trainer, Video Poker for Winners!, has my name attached to it. My claim to fame, I suppose, is that I’m the top professional player that writes about the game. My columns in Casino Player, Strictly Slots, Jackpot, and other periodicals have made me the best-known professional video poker player ever. A major reason for this is that most of the other top players shy away from the spotlight. It’s not such a hard task, perhaps, to be the best-known if you’re standing up and announcing yourself, while everyone else is ducking down! That said, a “solid professional” is head and shoulders above 6 Million Dollar Video Poker the general public in terms of ability. To use an analogy from base- ball, I would be a typical major league player—only occasionally making the all-star team. But even getting to the major leagues is more difficult than most people could manage. I get e-mails all the time from readers saying things like, “After a lot of work practicing Double Bonus on Video Poker for Winners!, I can now usually play at the 98% level. Is that good enough?” My answer is always something like, “If you’re interested in playing at a competent recreational level and want to enjoy casino vacations less expensively than most people can, you’re doing just fine. Keep up the good work! If you want to be a net winner at the game, you’re not even close.” Many people reading this book are doing so because they’d like to win a million dollars, too. Who wouldn’t? But as I’ve mentioned, a professional gambler is worlds apart from the minor leaguers. By describing myself here, you’ll have some familiarity with my background. Although no two professionals have the identical resumé, we all have certain things in common. This will give you an idea of what it takes. First of all, every successful professional player I know is quite bright. Some of us are very nerdy and social misfits, but the brainpower is there. Second, I’ve been playing games at a pretty high level all my life. As a boy I could beat everyone at Scrabble, chess, checkers, and other games. In college I learned poker, bridge, and pinochle. In the mid-’70s, I learned backgammon; I played it for money for almost 20 years. In the mid-’80s I taught myself to count cards at blackjack and became reasonably good at that game. By the time I came to video poker in 1994, I was highly experienced both game-wise and gambling-wise. Third, strategic thinking dominates most of what I do. In college, my bachelors, masters, and Ph.D. work was in economics, which is basically applied logic. When I read novels, they’re frequently about lawyers or politicians or spies. Most of these books present problems that are solved only through logical thinking. The Ins and Outs of Video Poker 7

Even though I haven’t played bridge or live poker for more than 20 years, I still read the bridge column in the newspaper and the poker magazines regularly. Why? Because every now and then I learn another key to strategic thinking. And sometimes I can use that key to unlock a secret to winning at video poker. Fourth, I’m someone who can accumulate and keep a bankroll. I’m a good “saver,” and the fact that Shirley is too was an important decision variable (among many others) that led to our marriage in 1997. Fifth, I can maintain concentration on one task for a long time. One difference between Shirley and me is that she can do 17 things at once, all of them at a fairly high level. I can do one thing at a time at a very high level. In life as a whole, Shirley’s way is better. In playing professional video poker, my way is better. Sixth, I can deal with bankroll ups and downs. For whatever reason, losing bothers me less than most other people. By the same token, winning excites me less than most others too. This allows me to stay focused on the goals at hand without the big emotional swings that some other people go through. Trust me, bankroll swings happen to every player. Guaranteed! Seventh, I’m willing and able to practice long hours on a computer until I have a game mastered. I don’t need to venture into the casino until I’m at my best. Thirty-some years ago my memory was considerably better than it is today. (I’d tell you exactly when that was, but I can’t remember!) I have to work longer than I used to in order to retain things, but I’m willing to do that. Eighth, solving puzzles is fun for me and I’m good at it. If it’s a crossword puzzle, I go for the ones marked “Expert” or “Challenger.” If it’s a cryptogram, I skip the first three-fourths of them as being too easy. Remember, every video poker hand presents a puzzle. There are 32 different ways to solve each puzzle and, almost always, only one of those ways is the best. Ninth, I’m pretty good at math, at least through high school algebra and college probability and statistics. It’s easy for me to add 348 and 793 in my head. This is a very useful skill if you want 8 Million Dollar Video Poker to calculate what double points would be worth on a particular machine at a particular casino. Tenth, in recent years anyway, I’ve had friends around me to turn to when I didn’t know which way to go. Most recently, these have included Shirley, Jeffrey Compton, and Liam W. Daily. Anthony Curtis has thrown some valuable tips my way, too, as have numerous other people. Eleventh, for reasons I discuss later in the book, I’ve been a video poker writer and teacher since 1997. In these capacities, people ask me all sorts of questions, so I’m forced to keep doing research and making sure I know the subject inside and out. As Dr. William Allen, a professor of economics I greatly admired when I was a graduate student at UCLA, said, “Research is to teaching as sin is to confession. Without the first, you have nothing to say in the second.” Twelfth, I’m a pretty good negotiator. This might not seem to fit into the skills necessary to be a successful gambler, but it does. All kinds of situations, some dealing with lots of money, arise in which you and someone else have to decide on how to handle them. You’ll see several stories in this book about how I was able to talk someone into something that was good for me. There’s an art to that, and being good at it pays dividends. Those are the dozen skills that I bring to every video poker machine in every casino. Now, no other pro has quite the same mix of skills that I have. Some are better at math or are proficient at more video poker games. Others are weaker at some of the things where I excel. No matter what skills any of us have, the test as to whether someone is a top pro or not is simple: If you can make considerable money at this game year in and year out, you’re a top pro. If you can’t, you’re not. How much is “considerable money?” That’s debatable. And many pros have had losing years now and then. But overall, this test is fairly straightforward. So if I’m not head and shoulders above the other pros, how did I happen to win a million dollars while no one else did? For one thing, other pros did too. I know five different players who’ve The Ins and Outs of Video Poker 9 had $500,000+ years, and there are likely more that I don’t know about. And as I’ve said, a large part of it is that we just got plain lucky. Shirley hit a $400,000 royal flush after only 6,000 or so hands on a $100 machine. On average, royals come every 40,000 hands, so it could be said that we got the royal 34,000 hands early. Another reason is that when the “casino opportunity to die for” came along, we had the bankroll, knowledge, and willingness to go for it with considerably more gusto than anyone else. For whatever reason, during this special six-month period, the video poker gods smiled on us and granted us royals every 25,000- 30,000 hands on average, instead of the usual 40,000. And all 100 or so royals that we hit during that period were for $20,000 or more. Who knows why? Skill was a factor, to be sure, but other factors were just as important. It happened, nonetheless. And someday it will happen to someone else.

How Much in This Book is True? Most of it, actually, but not all. Most of my professional- level colleagues would be horror-stricken at the thought of being identified in a book. So whenever I felt the need to speak about them, I changed their names and some of their characteristics. But the gist of who they are and what happened is factual. The numbers I cite as to how much I won or lost at a particular time are reasonably accurate. But some of these events took place seven years ago and I just don’t remember completely. The names of the following people are real (or in many cases are the pseudonyms these people use). They’re all described fairly, if at times flatteringly: Jeffrey Compton, Anthony Curtis, Liam W. and Katherine Daily, Tom and Margaret Elardi, Adam Fine, Glenn Fine, Lenny Frome, Paul Henderson, Skip Hughes, Dan Paymar, Lawrence Revere, Jean Scott, Shirley and her family, Arnold Snyder, TomSki, Stanford Wong, Dean and Sara Zamzow. All other names in the book are fictitious and are used to represent people I’ve known. 10 Million Dollar Video Poker

Of necessity, a lot of what happened to me over the past seven years has been omitted. Some of it is repetitious, some has little to do with video poker, and some secrets are better left untold. The central story of the book, however—that I started with a $6,000 bankroll in 1994 and my wife Shirley and I together netted more than $1 million by playing video poker between September 1, 2000, and March 15, 2001—is absolutely true.

What You Need to Know About Video Poker to Understand this Book Video poker is, at its core, an easy game to understand. You bet your coins and the machine deals five cards. You select the cards you want to keep, if any, and the machine replaces the cards you didn’t keep, if any. If you make a winning hand on the play, you’re paid according to a pay schedule usually displayed on the front of the machine. And then the game is over. The average video poker hand lasts about six seconds for a moderately fast player. If you want to play again, you can. If not, you don’t have to. That’s video poker in a nutshell. For knowledgeable players, however, there are a lot of com- binations, permutations, and related considerations involved. To aid in discussions and analyses, video poker regulars have developed a shorthand terminology to refer to different machines. The remainder of this section explains much of that terminology. Winning players must first select the type of game to play. In this book, I concentrate on only a few games—Jacks or Better, Deuces Wild, Double Bonus, and Joker Poker. Dozens of other video poker games are found in casinos, but there’s no reason to list them here, because they’re barely mentioned in this book. Even among the good games, there are lots of variations in pay schedules. I pay close attention to the numbers on a pay schedule, because even a 1-unit reduction in the return for a full house or flush lowers the return by 1%, in addition to often making considerable differences in the correct strategy. How much is 1%? On The Ins and Outs of Video Poker 11 a dollar machine, a 1% reduction costs $30 per hour, and during this time I was playing 60 or more hours per weeks. Giving up an unnecessary $1,800 per week is no way to build a bankroll! Jacks or Better is the game of choice for high-stakes players in Las Vegas. The best commonly found schedule returns 9 times your bet for a full house and 6 times your bet for a flush (there are some rare games with better pays). This schedule is referred to simply as 9/6 Jacks or Better, or sometimes 9/6 Jacks. The game returns 99.5439% with perfect play, which means that for every $1 million you play perfectly, the machine pays you $995,439 and keeps $4,561 for itself. Players with a drive to succeed never make a bet unless it returns more than 100%, so this game is avoided by smart players unless the slot club or one or more casino promotions kick in enough to make the game positive (i.e., raise the return to more than $1 million for each $1 million played). Deuces Wild is the most popular game for quarter players in Las Vegas. The full-pay version pays 15 for 5-of-a-kind and 5 for 4-of-a-kind. Playing it well yields a return of 100.76%. This game does not exist for dollars in Vegas today, although it did until 1999 or so. The NSU version (which stands for “not so ugly”) returns 16 for 5-of-a-kind and 10 for a straight flush. It returns only 99.73% when played perfectly, but can be a good game with the right slot club. A version of Deuces Wild called Loose Deuces reduces the pay for 4-of-a-kind from 5 to 4 and increases the pay for 4 deuces from 200 to 500. There are several Loose Deuces pay schedules out there, but the one discussed in this book pays 15 for 5-of-a- kind and 10 for a straight flush for a return percentage of 101%. Double Bonus is a game similar to Jacks or Better, only 4-of- a-kinds pay a lot more in Double Bonus (and full houses, flushes, and straights pay a little more). The downside to Double Bonus is that two pair returns even money, whereas you get double your money back in Jacks or Better. The best version of the game pays 10 for a full house and 7 for a flush. It’s called, not surprisingly, 10/7 Double Bonus, and returns 100.17%. It’s also very difficult 12 Million Dollar Video Poker to play well. International Game Technology (IGT) is the world’s largest manufacturer of video poker and slot machines. Its 10/7 Double Bonus games pay 250 for a 5-coin straight flush and yield the 100.17% return referenced above. In the 10/7 Double Bonus games found in the GameMaker machines manufactured by Bally Gaming Systems, a 5-coin straight flush pays 400 coins, which raises the return to 100.53%. Correct strategy is very similar for the two games, but not identical. When knowledgeable players want to distinguish between the games, they usually talk about 10/7/50 for the IGT version and 10/7/80 for the Bally version, as 50 and 80 are the 1-coin values that correspond to the 5-coin payouts for 250 and 400, respectively. Several versions of Joker Poker are found throughout the country. The game found in Nevada returns even money for a pair of kings or aces, so it’s usually called Kings or Better Joker Poker, or Kings or Better Joker Wild. The best version pays 20 for 4-of-a-kind and 7 for a full house. When it pays 4,000 coins for a royal flush, the game is worth 100.65% and when it pays 4,700 coins for a royal flush, the game is worth an even 101%. This is a very different game from any version of Joker Poker in which the lowest payout is for two pair—either game can be better than the other, depending on how much is returned for a flush, full house, and other hands. The Joker Wild game found in Atlantic City is a Two Pair or Better version. But in this game, 5-of-a-kind has a 4,000-coin payout, while a royal flush is considered to be merely a type of straight flush and is paid accordingly. This game has a different strategy from either of the previously mentioned Joker games. Once you’ve determined which game you want to play, the next thing to consider is the slot club. Slot clubs are set up by the casinos to encourage player loyalty. They often reward players with cash and/or comps (“complimentaries”)—such as rooms, meals, and shows—according to various formulas. These formulas often award points faster to slot players than video poker play- The Ins and Outs of Video Poker 13 ers, because slot players tend to lose considerably more money to the casinos. Frequently, employees who work in a slot club booth, and even casino hosts, neither know nor care about the fine points of their club. A successful video poker player learns the ins and outs of slot clubs so he knows them even better than the casino employees do. “Cashback” is important for successful video poker players. When I talk about, say, .67% cashback, I mean that for every $3 a player puts through a machine, he gets 2¢ back—the cashback— from the casino (3 x .0067 = .02). But casinos rarely define it so simply. One casino might tell you that every $15 you play gives you a point and that 100 points can be redeemed for $10 cashback. Another might say that every $75 of play gives you a point and that 100 points can be redeemed for $50 in cashback. These are equivalent systems. The best introduction to slot clubs—including how they differ and how to choose the best one for you—can be found in the book The Las Vegas Advisor Guide to Slot Clubs by Jeffrey Compton. An updated edition of the book, with the new title Slot Club Nation, is due out in 2003. Intelligent players add slot club cashback to the return on the game to determine how much it’s worth. So a “1% slot club” added on to a 99.54% game results in a 100.54% return. To know what that figure means in terms of profit potential, you need to know how much money you can run through the machines in an hour. I use 600 hands per hour as an approximation. So quarter players, betting five coins for $1.25 per hand times 600 hands per hour, put $750 per hour in action. With a .54% advantage (the amount exceeding the 100% breakeven point), this is worth a whopping $4.05 per hour. Under this scenario, dollar players put $3,000 per hour into action, so the same game is worth $16.20 hourly. And five-dollar players can run $15,000 of action through a machine. For them, a .54% advantage is worth $81 per hour. Now we’re talking! Playing faster increases the return. Making mistakes decreases the return. Casino promotions also add value to a game. Double or triple 14 Million Dollar Video Poker slot club points is a common type of promotion. Double pay for a particular 4-of-a-kind (perhaps 7777) is another. Paying double for the second royal hit within 24 hours is another. Sometimes you get drawing tickets for various hands. Sometimes the drawing tickets are almost worthless (as when 100,000 tickets are in the drum for one $1,000 prize) and sometimes they’re worth a lot (as when 100 tickets are in the drum for $100,000). Evaluating the value of the tickets is part of the game. For the most part, that’s all you need to know to understand what I’ll be talking about in the many real-life situations you’ll read about in this book. Certainly, players who’ve been-there and done-that will get more out of the stories than those who haven’t. But I’ve written so that anyone, no matter how much or how little he or she knows about video poker and casino life, will learn quite a bit more—and get a vicarious million-dollar thrill at no extra charge!—from the stories included in Million Dollar Video Poker.